Disclaimer: I’m a blind film critic, and while Tubi liked it enough to put Original on it, they didn’t love it enough to put audio description on it. Tubi, the boyfriend who asks you to move in, assuming it absolves him from never having to propose.

They don’t make them like they used to. That is a bit of a misnomer, because they do, but time forces evolution. As we continue to invent things, reshape the worlds we live in, and push mankind further down the road of evolution, the art of film changes shape. Sometimes slowly, sometimes abruptly. For years, they made black and white, and also color films. They made talkies and silent films concurrently. We have sent films to theaters, and to video, and now we balance a market trying to answer the question of what is a streaming film? Representation has changed, and shifted, and that is just film. It mirrors us, so it can sell to us either stories reflective of who we are or who we want to be.

So, with How To Lose A Popularity Contest, a serviceable and enjoyable teen comedy, my initial note and reaction to my YouTube channel was how this film felt timeless. It was a simple concept, and no matter the decade, it fits. 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, or 00’s. we have quite a lot of films right now worried about how to be funny, what is too raunchy, how people are represented, are they represented, can we have more representation, and I love a lot of those movies. Often, we see a film that is just as raunchy as American Pie or Porky’s, but instead, it is now gender flipped. The suggestion being that if the girls control the bad behavior, if the joke is that the girls are trying to lose their virginities, that we reinvented the wheel. Not really, it just has a new paint job. Both films can be funny, and both can be raunchy, sometimes a film doesn’t know where it stands until the next generation reflects on it and dismisses it. Teens in the 90’s weren’t watching American Pie with concern, they just thought it was funny.

Some people blame this on that nonsense term woke-culture, including a random who quickly slid in to my video review of this with a rallying cry against woke culture, and tossing some disdain at Star Trek’s newest entry for being killed by woke culture. Listen, that show has problems beyond what you percieve. If Starfleet Academy was cast entirely with straight white guys, which is the assumed preference of anyone believing anything is ever woke, the show would still suck. It still has problems bleeding conceptually out of the writers room. White pride isn’t going to save or fix anything, and continuing to suggest that it is, or it will, is absurd.

When I say, I enjoyed the simplicity of this, I mean the fact that it truly feels like a film that works anywhere, for anyone. it isn’t so specifically catered to be just an LGBTQ title, or serving up diverse realness. It also doesn’t relish in trying to figure out what level of lewd humor is appropriate. It feels like a new She’s All That, which is just some silly fluff to entertain you and not make you think. For ninety minutes, instead of thinking about invading a sovereign nation, I get to watch two high schoolers plot to get their exes back. it’s a classic mold that has been done before, and they didn’t do much to it. It’s like watching yet another Affair To Remember.

The story is pretty simple. We meet a girl, who feels like a loser, and is treated as such. She has a boyfriend, and the understanding is that they know they are at the bottom of the popularity rung. He wants to run for Student Body President, and she insults him saying people like them never win popularity contests. He breaks up with her. She then teams up with her nemesis, a jock, whose girlfriend just broke up with him because he isn’t taking things seriously, and she pitches the idea that she runs his campaign for student Body President. it’ll prove she’s right to her ex, and it’ll prove to the jock’s girlfriend that he’s serious. If there isn’t a plot to a film screaming at you that you’ve seen this before, I don’t know what else is.

They cast teen stars here, ripping one away from Ginny and Georgia, and plucking the jock straight off of TikTok. it even has that She’s All That moment where one of the duo realizes, or believes incorrectly, that the other is just using them. It isn’t quite as memorable as “Am I a bet? Am i a fucking bet?”

Think of the popularity contest to win Prom Queen in Mean Girls, or basically anything teen movie ever. My point, in saying it’s refreshing because it feels like something we aren’t making, is due in part to the fact this film isn’t really treading new ground. It has some token representation, as most films do, but the film is never about that. it is just your overly accessible, derivative, fluffy, cotton candy teen comedy. I enjoyed the simplicity of it. I actually enjoyed that it wasn’t trying to push the boundaries of an R rating. It threw me back to the hundred films it is copying, and that was a nice moment.

Sure, the moment of indignance from one of the leads isn’t earned. They literally discuss the plan at the beginning, and while she ends up forcing his hand, it still shouldn’t come as a surprise. The adults here are a bit too goofy, a recurring problem in a lot of teen films. But, the kids are well cast, and this is just exactly as how you remembered it. It is like finding your favorite breakfast cereal from when you were a kid, and trying it to find out it is exactly as you remembered it.

No, this film isn’t going to win awards. I’m not sure I boldly fight for its honor due to the lack of audio description. Even the Tubi of it all means I have to commit to commercials. But at the end of the day, formulas often work because they are tried and true, and it is easy to dismiss something for being formulaic. This is very much that, but it really did a lovely job of following the formula, and giving me a nice time waster. I think people might enjoy this. not because it is woke, or it isn’t. Not because there is or isn’t diversity, as I don’t even know the ethnic makeup of the cast, but because this film took a simple plot and stuck to it. Teen comedies were never meant to change the world, or be regarded as highbrow entertainment. We just got a few that tripped and fell into excellence. most teen films are this, and we merge the idea of quality with our need for nostalgia. It’s pretty hard to look at a film like Sixteen Candles, where the Asian character is introduced in every scene with a gong noise, as the icon it is, unless you grew up with it. Nowadays, teens barely watch features. I asked a teen the other day what movies or shows they watched, and every single thing was a YouTube or TikTok star. Their entire consumption of entertainment being driven purely by social media.

If this film can spark anyone’s attention away from the scrolling of short videos and content creators, I’m here for it.

How To Lose a Popularity Contest is perhaps the most formulaic film of the year, but I’m not actually sure that’s such a bad thing.

Fresh: 6.4/10